Real Life Rooms: Garage Door Curb Appeal Dilemma

Hey there Remodelaholic readers! Dawn here, from AD Aesthetic, and I’m back this month with another reader question mockup to hopefully inspire some creative ideas for your space. This month we’re talking garage door curb appeal — if you’ve missed any of my previous reader question mockups, you can always see all my posts here.

If you follow Remodelaholic on Facebook, you’ve probably seen several of the reader questions that are submitted every month. Well each month here on Remodelaholic, I choose one reader submitted photo to offer my two cents on, and I create a Photoshop mock up of what I would do if I were in your shoes! (Pssssst— you can submit your reader questions by messaging Remodelaholic on Facebook! Be sure to include a good quality photo!)

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First though, my standard disclaimer:While I can recommend ideas that I think look nice, I have never seen this house in real life and don’t have accurate measurements. I am also not an architect or landscaper and do not know the planting recommendations for your area- I just like to make things look nice. I can’t guarantee that any of the items I put in my ‘virtual’ design will actually work in real life (or that they’ll fit your design style for that matter), and this is not intended to be a professional design consultation. So think of this as a just-for-fun rendering that hopefully gets your wheels turning and provides some inspiration!

On to the fun!

READER QUESTION from Kim – We have been having a great debate whether to paint our house the same color or choose completely different colors. I am looking to add more curb appeal and do not know how. Thanks!

This home is already adorable, but I love experimenting with different options, and the style of this home was one I knew many people could relate to. Particularly, how to handle the large garage doors in the front of the house. Currently the white of the garages is really jumping out, because they look a tad brighter than the siding, while the pretty peaks, which should stand out, are fading into the roof because of the similar colors. Before I jumped into my mockup, I decided to look around for some similar style homes to inspire me. Here’s what I found:

Ideas for Porch Curb Appeal

Can you see a theme going on here? 🙂 I was really drawn to homes that tied the garage door color into the rest of the house, but still allowed the garage doors to be an aesthetic feature. Sufficiently inspired, here is what I came up with for Kim’s home:

Garage Door Curb Appeal

Contrast in Color

As I mentioned above, with the current color scheme, the garage doors were really standing out to me, but not in the best way. The slightly whiter color made the rest of the house look a little dirty by comparison. A good rule of thumb is to make sure your color differentiation looks intentional. If there’s not enough contrast to tell that it was intentional, it almost always looks like a mistake. Instead of white, I transformed the doors with a deep gray paint, matching them to the peaks of the house, to create a unified look. Now they’re dramatic, which is great, since they take up so much visual space on the house, but they’re not glaring.

We matched these exterior colors (thanks to these paint color apps) to some similar paint colors to give you an idea of where to start at the paint store to recreate this look — as always, make sure to test the paint colors for your situation since this is a virtual makeover and colors often look different in natural lighting.

Define the Space

Similarly, the lack of real contrast in the peaks, trim, and roof colors was making the whole top of the house blend together, taking away a lot of the charming craftsman style details of this home. To fix this issue, I went dark with the peaks, but trimmed everything out in white to break up the roof from the siding. This adds a ton of contrast and makes the house look much larger than it did before, since the eye is drawn up to the highest points now. I also added some detail with craftsman style corbels on the peaks, to bring a bit more interest to the area, and emphasize the style the home is already rocking. For the remainder of the siding, I chose a neutral gray color that is on the lighter side, but still provides enough contrast with the white to look intentional (see above). It lets the more dramatic dark gray stand out without competition, but still adds a rich, warm tone to the overall color palette.

Warm up the Welcome

The last color update I made was to the front door. Currently, the cream door is blending into the cream siding, and hidden behind a cream railing. Adding a fun pop of color really makes the entrance stand out, which in turn makes the home feel more welcoming to guests.

As a side note, since Kim just asked for color recommendations to up the curb appeal, I didn’t venture into structural changes with this mockup, but I do think swapping out the metal railing for a beefy craftsman style column on the front porch would be another way to add some style and visual weight to the home. Plus it would look great with the other craftsman details that are already there!

So what do you think? What would you do if this were your home?

As always, thank you to Cassity and the Remodelaholic team for having me back each month. If you like this post, and have a design dilemma you’d like me to mock up some ideas for, you can ask your questions by sending Remodelaholic a message over on Facebook, or checkout my mockup design services over on my site adaesthetic.com. And be sure to follow me on Facebook, Pinterest, or Instagram and say hello! Have a great day, friends!

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About Dawn Sailors

Dawn is one half of the team behind the creative blog, AD Aesthetic. By day she works as the VP of Creative for a design and marketing company (getting paid to make things look good!), while by night she renovates her Midwest home, refinishes thrift-store furniture for fun, and works with her husband on raising two tiny humans. Dawn believes in the potential to design your surroundings and your life one day at a time, and lives by the motto, 'Make everything beautiful.' Get to know her better by visiting her blog, ADaesthetic.com, or following along on Facebook and Instagram.

We’d love to see yours, Brenda! If you’ll message us over on Facebook (http://www.Facebook.com/remodelaholic), we can post it for our readers to give you some ideas and yours might be chosen by Dawn for an upcoming mockup, or you can work directly with Dawn for a mockup by contacting her through her site: http://adaesthetic.com/design-services/ (scroll down to the mockup section)

I was happy to see somebody cover the garage door when talking about curb appeal. It is such a large are of the house that gets overlooked way too often. A new Style Garage door can completely transform the look as well.

We love hearing from fellow Remodelaholics, so let us know what you like about this and leave any questions below in the comments. If you have followed a tutorial or been inspired by something you have seen here, we would love to see pictures! Submit pictures here or by messaging us over on Facebook.

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Remodelaholic is a participant in the Amazon Services LLC Associates Program, an affiliate advertising program designed to provide a means for sites to earn advertising fees by advertising and linking to amazon.com. Please see our full disclosure here.